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The Types of Redemption
96
Do you remember the man with the four friends who carried him over, tore off the housetop, and
lowered him down in front of Jesus, getting dust in everybody’s hair and interrupting the
service? Jesus looked at him, and what did He say to him? “Son, your sins are forgiven you.”
(Mark 2:3-5) It made all of the preachers mad, didn’t it?
They said, “Who is He, saying He forgives sin?” (Mark 2:6-7) Why did He say that? Did the
man say that he was coming to be forgiven? No, he came to get healed. But this had to be dealt
with first, so he would be free from this guilt, shame, and condemnation, because He was about
to tell him to do something that takes faith. He told him, “Get up from there, take up your bed,
and go out.” But he can’t. He’s paralyzed. It’s going to take faith. It’s going to take some
confidence in the Word of God to act on that word, and in order to have that confidence, you
must be free from guilt, shame, and condemnation. You can’t go around harboring and hiding a
bunch of things from your past, and keep holding on to that guilt and shame. It will choke off
your faith. It will keep you from even believing God will hear you.
Is the Blood enough, more than enough, to cleanse you from every sin and to make you whole
and righteous? Then you ought to lose that guilt. You ought to lose that condemnation and come
on into faith.
He didn’t send His Son into the world to condemn the world. He sent His Son into the world so
that we could be free from the condemnation and have faith and receive our life and our
inheritance. (John 3:17)
In the type we are studying, he’s talking about Jesus having to be lifted up, just like Moses lifted
up the serpent, the snake, on the pole.
“A snake on a pole is a type of Jesus?” The Bible says so. It is a brass snake. Brass is typical of
judgment, and the snake is typical of sin and evil. How could that be a type of Jesus? Oh, it is.
Because when Jesus hung on the cross, it was not pretty. People make crosses that are beautiful,
out of gold and ornamented with jewels, but the cross in its day was like the electric chair or like
a lethal injection. It was the death penalty for the worst criminals. When He hung on the cross, it
was not pretty. He became sin with our sin (2 Corinthians 5:21) and was judged, brass. It became
dark, and the sun was darkened. He cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
(Matthew 27:45-46) Why? Because He was treated as sin and judged as sin. Everything evil and
everything ugly that you have ever done, or thought, or been a part of, or that any human being
has ever been or ever will be, converged on Him, and He didn’t just empathize with it. He
became it. He became sin. Though He had none of His own, He became sin with our sin and was
judged. The brass serpent.
When He died, when they took Him off of the cross and buried Him, there was no shouting;
there were no trumpets. It was cold, it was dark, it was hard, it was bad, and the devil thought he
won.
The Bible says if the devil had known, and his princes had known, they would never have
crucified the Lord of Glory. (1 Corinthians 2:8) They did not know what they were getting into.
They thought they were winning. They thought they had won.